Some Considerations on the Educational “Situation”, Between Performativity and Commitment

Considering the distortion of meaning to which the word lends itself in the neo-liberal use of theexpression “stay-at/in-situation” with reference to school and educational contexts, my brief analysiswill focus on the meaning the word originally assumed in the phenomenological-existential vocabu-lary. Here, in fact, ‘situation’ does not only identify the necessary anchorage to the already-given con-tingency, but mainly describes the relation of meaning between subject and reality. In the first case,the prescription of being constrained (even morally) by the real prevails, which corresponds to theaction-outcome nexus; in the second case, intersubjectivity as a field of forces that creates the chang-ing meanings of the real prevails, which corresponds to the ability to project oneself. In the first case,reality can be described by indicators that measure it, based on which it is necessary to measure theexpected outcome. In the second case, reality consists of elements with different meanings for eachof the contributors, the mutual influence of which determines reality itself. The same discourse alsoapplies to the confusion between result and project: project, phenomenologically understood, doesnot correspond to the result, but to the broader horizon that maintains the relation between differentexistential and social situations.